Hogar is a half-orc Beastmaster Ranger on a quest to destroy Orcus the Demon Prince of the Undead. This is his journal, recounting the exploits of Hogar and his companions on their quest.

12th Day of Meloramensis – Part III

Hogar’s Journal (Translated from Giant)

Year 781 of the
founding of the City

12th
Day of Meloramensis – Part III

Thunderspire
Mountain – Hall of the Howling Pillars

With some difficulty we retraced our steps
and rejoined the corridor where we had encountered three ghostly adventurers
the previous day. As we continued along
the gloom Rodney, a miniature ball of flame hovering over his tattooed head as
illumination, flicked through the pages of the book he had recovered from the
gnoll summoner.

“This
text is ancient minotaur.” He said to
Minron proffering him the text. “Are you
able to understand any of it.” The
minotaur did not even turn his head to regard the book.

“Mage,
if the text was common, I could read it.
If it was in modern minotaur I might be able to read it. As it’s in ancient anything you may as well
show me the book of Asmodeus in Barazhad.
I’m afraid I have no idea.” The
mage’s brow furrowed as he returned the tome to its hiding place within his
voluminous blue robes.

“Very
well, I will summon the knowledge when I have the opportunity to concentrate.”

We trudged on. The dwarf tottered alongside his porcine
companion Sid, his footsteps echoing
from the ceiling and walls and reverberating along the tunnel into the
distance.

“Zaram.” I hissed.
“If you rang a bell and shouted our intentions at the top of your voice
you could scare do a better job of announcing our presence here.” Two paces in front of me the dwarf half
turned to face me. His ugrosh lay across
both shoulders, writs resting upon the shaft to leave his elbows dangling
perpendicular to his ears. He sniffed
and wrinkled his nose, his orange whiskers rippled across his upper lip and his
braided beard swung loosely in front of his tarnished scale shirt.

“Stealth
is for timid surface dwellers; elves and humans.” Somehow the way he said ‘elves and humans’
turned the words themselves into an insult.
“I prefer to face my enemies.
Anyway, it would be no bad thing for me to announce myself. Our enemies will surely quake with fear
knowing they face death at the hands of Hammerfast’s greatest warrior.”

“Surely.” I replied, trying to keep the sarcasm from my
voice.

After a while the echoes of Glen’s footsteps
and the groan of the leather straps holding his armour in place was subsumed by
a cacophonous mournful wail from somewhere up ahead.

“Dampen
your noise.” I hissed at the dwarf as I
trotted ahead silently to investigate. I
turned right and followed another corridor until it stopped at a set of black
double doors, identical to those that had concealed the gnoll demon
summoners.

The doors were sweating.

Condensation seemed to seep from the heart
of the ancient wood, forming rivulets that wound a leisurely path down the
grain of the wood to drip on the flagstones at my feet. I held the palm of my right hand to the
bottom of the doors. A moist warmth rose
from the gap between door and floor to disperse amongst the more gelid
atmosphere of the corridor. All about me
was silence so I decided to open the doors.
The merest touch of my fingertips was sufficient for the doors to
silently and gently swing away from me.
As they did so warm air rushed past me at such a speed and with such
force that I blinked at its passing. My
skin tingled and beads of sweat formed at my hairline as my body adjusted to
the change in temperature. I was confronted
with another light ingesting black stone room.
What pitiful lustre that did seep its way into the blackness bounced
languidly across the walls and ceiling to reveal a suite of three, perhaps four
linked rooms supported at regular intervals by uneven nodular columns. I could make out nothing from which the wail
that had filled the corridor could have emanated.

I paused in the doorway to await the arrival
of the others. Shortly they caught up
with varying levels of noise, though all quieter than they had been. Rodney and Eligos slipped past me into the
darkness just before Glen, mounted on his Boar barged past to follow them. Eligos rummaged in her pack and drew out a
sunrod. She twisted it and raised it
above her head. Bright light glinted
from the russet scales of the now koboldish tiefling, illuminating her purple
robes and leather amour and cascading out to fill the nearest of the four
chambers. As the light pierced the gloom
another wail sounded out from the pillars supporting the ceiling. Not only that but they recoiled from the luminescence.
The light of the sunrod revealed that the pillars were not nodular stone
structures but piles of densely packed bodies.
The bodies were not whole.
Disjointed limbs and torsos jutted from a protoplasmic core that was
difficult to discern from amidst the circus of flesh. Heads of all races jutted from the press,
their crazed eyes scrunched against the intrusive light as they gnashed their
teeth and wailed in protest. The sound
of the sunrod crashing to the floor and rolling to one side brought my
attention to Eligos as she raised her shield and readied her flail.

“There
are demons in there.” She said
indicating the nearest column. Minron
and I readied our weapons and cautiously followed them into the chamber.

The pillars of flesh had settled into a
catatonic torpor. Silence was our only
companion as we edged our way amongst the slack limbs to investigate the
interior of the chamber. Suddenly the
silence was broken by an enraged scream from the pillars. Sinewy, taloned claws struck out from the
columns to grasp at us. Minron, Eligos and myself managed to jink clear but
Rodney and Glen, together with his mount, were not so fortunate. Grasping fingers palpated across the faces
and torsos of my companions, gradually drawing them further into the morass of
the ululating mob until they disappeared altogether. Just as suddenly as the column near to us had
burst into rapacious action they fell silent and still. But in the still darkened chambers to our rear
we could hear the same commotion, undoubtedly from other such columns. Very quickly this noise also dissolved to
leave only silence.

“Sid!” Glen’s shout, tinged with panic, punctuated
the darkness of the other rooms. “Sid
where are you?” His query was answered
with a porcine grunt from somewhere else in the gloom.

“Glen?” Rodney’s voice called to add his noise to the
dwarf’s. “Are you alright? I’ve emerged near some sort of alter. There’s a mask on it. It must be the one we are after.” I winced at their racket but there was no
helping it now.

“For
pity’s sake.” I called to them as I
nocked an arrow. “Grab the pig, grab the
mask and lets get the hell out of here.”

“He’s
not a pig, he’s a boa..” Glen did not
have time to finish his rebuke before the sound of explosion and smell of
sulphur filled the chamber. An otherworldly
roar soon followed and I did not have to see the source to realise that it was
another balgura demon.

I did not have time to ponder the
consequences of this before three evistro carnage demons unfolded from
encapsulating flesh of the pillars. Without
thought I drew back the arrow readied on my bowstring and loosed it at the
nearest blood red homunculus. It struck
him a mortal wound to the throat, or so I thought. The little demon simply lowered its bald pate
to regard the offending shaft before grasping it in the black clawed fingers of
its left hand and tearing it free. I
sent three more arrows to follow the first, all of them finding their
mark. Though hurt even this was not
enough to bring the pint sized monster down.
My efforts earned me nothing but the attention of the other evistros as
they all hurled themselves at me with murderous intent. I barely managed to avoid their charge before
Eligos came to my aid and blocked their progress. Having put herself between me and my
tormentors she pressed forward to batter them back towards the darkness of
another chamber with her flail. Her
vicious assault bought me the space I needed to finally dispatch my initial
target and put an arrow into the face of a second.

As the arrow struck Rodney came careering
around a corner to join us once again in the first chamber. He was surrounded by semi-opaque halo of
flame, non of which seemed to be harming him in any way and carrying a silver
mask depicting the face of a platinum dragon, the visage of Bahamut
himself. The mage was quickly followed
by Glen atop Sid.

“There’s
another of those big hairy horned ones!”
He shouted before wheeling Sid to block the path of his unseen
pursuer. The pursuer was indeed another
balgura and the large hairy demon was not alone. He was accompanied another carnage
demon. Charging ahead of his larger
cousin the carnage demon closed in on Glen but all he got for his trouble was a
face-full of ugrosh. The balgura’s
attempt to aid the carnage demon was hampered as two bolts of ice arced their
way from the palm of Rodney’s hands to strike the demon in the chest leaving
behind a sheen of frozen moisture clinging to the beast’s front, visibly
hampering his progress. Their leader
thus hampered the evistros redoubled their efforts, savaging Eligos and Glen
with their claws. Minron bellowed a plea
for aid to the Raven Queen and suddenly the area surrounding the minotaur was
bathed in white light. This seemed to
agitate the anguished forms within the columns who began suddenly to chant in
unison in a language I did not recognise.
Their bass tones rumbled through the chamber in a rhythmic beat. Steadily rising in volume and pace their
ecclesiastical chorus spurred the demons on even further. Glen and Sid proved an effective block
against their single foe but Eligos started to struggle up against two of the
beasts. Minron bellowed with rage and
charged to Eligos’ aid. Crashing into
one of the demons he knocked it to the ground.
From there it was a simple matter for a well placed arrow to reduce our
enemies numbers by one.

Placing yourself directly in the path of a
rampaging balgura demon is not normally good for your health, as Glen already
knew but the stout warrior continued his defiance of the creature with the help
of Rodney. Having recovered from the
mage’s icy blast the demon once again charged at the dwarf and his pig. Some quick reflexes managed to keep Glen out
of harm’s way and before the demon knew what was going on he was smashed full
in the face by the spectral, but all too solid, apparition of a ram’s
head. The force of the collision sent
the demon careering backwards into the darkness. In avoiding the balgura though Glen had not paid
sufficient attention to the chaos demon that menaced him also. A savage swipe of its claws tore through the
dwarf’s armour and brought forth steams of blood from his torso. To add to the
dwarf's misery the balgura chose that precise moment to come roaring once again
from the shadows to attack the dwarf.
Amazingly, injured though he was, Glen managed to anticipate that attack
and land a lethal slash to the demon's throat.
The momentum of the beast was not to be thwarted however and it crashed
into the dwarf at devastating speed, impaling him on one of its horns and
rendering him unconscious. Glen was now
helpless and at the mercy of the chaos demon that had torn open his chest. Just as it appeared that the demon might add
to our losses in the Well of Demons Rodney came to his rescue and immolated the
demon in a searing gout of flame. This
left but a single diminutive chaos demon standing against Minron and
Eligos. Minron swatted it to the ground
with his shield and I finished him off with an arrow.

Though grievous, Glen's injury was not
beyond Minron's ability to heal. Unconscious
but alive we lay the dwarf on Sid's back and led the beast back to the stables
where Vicrael lay waiting in permanent slumber, there to rest a while.